


ultraviolence

by olwin



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Kink, Dark Betty Cooper, Dark Jughead Jones, F/M, Vampire Jughead Jones, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-26 22:29:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20034976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olwin/pseuds/olwin
Summary: AU. Betty is forced to attend Southside High for a semester. There she meets a very strange and dangerous boy. Vampire AU (inspired by the W Magazine spread)





	ultraviolence

**Author's Note:**

> trying to get back into writing while battling depression, yay!   
anyway, i hope you enjoy this!

Southside High was a nightmare. 

The teachers could barely get through classes without being threatened or cajoled by the students, the cafeteria was a jungle of drugs and gang warfare, most of the lockers were routinely broken into and vandalized, and every morning she had to submit to a metal detector while being groped by a creepy looking warden. 

Alice had told her it was temporary. Only until they could send her to boarding school.

Betty was counting down the days. 

They sniffed her right away; she was a  _ good girl _ . The kind of good girl who still wore ribbons in her hair and drew hearts around her name. The kind who went to Riverdale High. So why wasn’t she there? Why was she  _ here _ ? 

That was the first question she was asked at lunch by a group of girls who looked like they could scratch out her eyes with their nails. 

“I had to leave Riverdale High for personal reasons,” she told them as the girls invaded her personal space, sitting all around her, blocking all exits. 

“Personal reasons,” one of them drawled. That was the leader, Toni. “Like what? Got kicked off the cheer team?”

The girls sniggered. 

Much to their surprise, Betty giggled too. 

“Yeah, that’s what happened,” she mumbled, looking down in her lap. “I wasn’t a good cheerleader, so they told me to leave.”

Toni smiled and sized her up. “You’re cute, but you’re gonna have to reinvent yourself if you want to survive here. This is your chance. You can be whoever you want,  _ Girl, Interrupted _ .”

Betty smiled back. “Is that my nickname?”

“Oh no. You don’t wanna know the real one.”

Betty didn’t doubt it was something humiliating. She'd been good at performing her good girl act her whole life, but lately she wasn’t even sure who she was anymore. She wasn't sure she could reinvent something which had not even been _invented_ yet. The person in the mirror looked like a stranger, half the time. But Toni had a point. The girls would be cool with her as long as she joined in and did not encroach on their territory. And the guys - well, most of them were Serpents and they  _ loved  _ to tease her about her innocent baby blues and her virginal pink lips. She was dessert. The kind you eat fast, otherwise it spoils. They wanted to hurt her, but also maybe make her feel good. That’s what they bragged about anyway. Sweet Pea always made sure to lick the V of his fingers when he was around her, just to let her know. 

She feared these boys and was drawn to them, in equal parts. After all, her mother had been a Serpent. She was fascinated by her buried heritage. But the allure of the bad boy was always smothered when she remembered she was  _ worse _ . These gangbangers, no matter how seemingly tough and mean, had no idea about the horrible things inside her head. The morbid obsessions. They were the true innocents. They weren’t sick. They were just young and reckless. 

Betty felt old, old and calculated, a different kind of serpent waiting to strike.

She wished she could tell them, all of them, _ you think I’m sweet and good, but I’m a disease. Stay away from me.  _

They had no idea about the real reason she was expelled. 

Still, she smiled and tried to get through the day, tried to be good and stick to the rules, even in a godless place like this. 

Tried. 

It wasn’t until the second week in that she started noticing the strange boy in the back of the cafeteria. It was difficult to actually identify anyone in the chaos, but what made her pay attention to him was the huge slushie he was drinking. The plastic cup was comically big. He slouched in his chair with his legs on the table, looking for all purposes as if he was barely awake. All he did was slurp slowly, eyes half-closed. 

Betty looked away with a shrug. Just another loner kid. 

After a few moments she looked back. 

There was something...off about the picture. He looked pale and skinny and barely put together, but there was something almost studied about his appearance. 

The wrinkled clothes, the scruffy beanie, the unruly locks, the coltish limbs, they were supposed to telegraph a burnout vibe, like he was just some misfit who loved getting high while listening to Morrissey, but...Betty couldn’t help feeling as if there was something artificial about his hipster posture.

He was not one of the boys who had tried to impress her or intimidate her, he had not come up to her to make lewd innuendos. He wasn’t part of a posse. He seemed harmless, maybe even  _ normal  _ or _ nice _ .

But something in her gut told her that maybe he wasn’t so nice. 

Most of the guys and girls seemed to avoid his general direction, even though his table was empty. That could've been just because he was some sad outcast, but maybe there was another reason. 

She looked at him until the straw slipped from his lips. His mouth was very red.

Betty looked away.

  
  


She noticed him again in Math. 

He sat a couple of seats behind her. How hadn’t she seen him earlier? 

The teacher droned on at the blackboard while everyone ignored him or threw spitballs at his moth-eaten sweater. It was a pretty depressing picture. She struggled to take notes, but her eyes slipped to the loner boy in the back of the class. 

The giant plastic cup was parked next to his feet. He was reading a paperback while chewing on a pencil. 

She tried to decipher the title.  _ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas _ . She didn’t know that one. She wrote it down to check out later. She was good at taking notes. She liked jotting down random details about the people around her. She wrote down, _ pencil, Vegas, red mouth, weird boy.  _

Betty felt foolish. She erased the words. Maybe his lips seemed so red because he was so pale. 

She realized they were the only two people in the class who were engaged in some kind of activity. The other students were texting or watching videos or torturing the teacher. 

She tried to return to Math, but something kept nagging at her. She stared at him surreptitiously. He was still reading, still chewing on a pencil. It was as if she was waiting for him to betray  _ something, s _ ome kind of wrongness.

_ Maybe you’re projecting _ , she thought, smoothing her shirt cuffs. The only one who was wrong here was her. 

She looked at him again, promising herself it would be the last time.

And that’s when it happened. His teeth must have worried the pencil too much. It snapped. In fact, the pencil broke in half. The pieces fell into his hand. He frowned, as if mildly inconvenienced. He threw the broken pieces in his bag.

And then he looked up. 

Straight at her.

His eyes were a harsh metal gray. Like a scalpel driving into flesh. 

For a moment, she was caught in a snare. She couldn't move. 

Betty blinked. 

She quickly turned in her seat, ducking her head low.

She could feel his steady gaze on her back. 

Her heart was beating fast. 

She did not look back at him until the end of class. 

In fact, she pretended to peruse her notes intently as he sauntered past her chair and out of the classroom.

When she lowered her notebook, she froze. 

On the edge of her desk was one pencil half. 

  
  


Alice knocked on her bedroom door later that night. 

“I’d like you to look over your extracurriculars, just to make sure we have everything covered for the interview next week.” 

Ah yes, the interview that would decide whether she was going to boarding school. She was  _ not  _ looking forward to it. 

“Sure thing, Mom.” Betty sank under the covers with her copy of Toni Morrison’s _The _ _ Bluest Eye _ . 

She had wanted to reread it out of nostalgia, but now she considered the oddity of her choice. The eeriness of eyes. 

Alice surveyed her with poorly concealed concern.

“You’ll be out of that place soon, Elizabeth. Though I’d take the time to reflect on my actions, if I were you. You know I tell you this because I love you.”

Betty pressed the book to her chest. “I know.”

Alice frowned. “What’s that you got in your palm?” 

_ It’s not a razor blade, don’t worry _ , Betty sniggered to herself mentally, and then felt bad about making fun.

She showed her the pencil half. 

“Oh. Well, don’t stay up too late.”

Betty smiled. “I won’t.”

When her mother shut the door, she turned on her side. Her smile vanished. 

She stared at the pencil half, running her fingers over the teeth marks. 

They looked sharp. 


End file.
